Read Online The Long Prospect by Elizabeth Harrower - Free Book Online Page B

fretted woodwork—home—was now in sight.
    Judging the distance, Emily pulled her hand free from a clasp uncomfortably damp and familiar. She lifted the trailing skirt to her knees and turning to her father with an excruciating assumption of friendliness, cried, ‘I’ll just tell them you’re coming,’ and fled head-first to the house.
    â€˜Emily!’
    An answer streamed after her but she kept running.
    This unprecedented defiance made Harry hasten a step or two and open his mouth to call again. But the exertion demanded by anger and command—in this heat—and the problematic success of any such attempt, arrested him. He slowed, closed his mouth and looked at his watch again.
    Her throat and chest scorched with breathlessness, Emily scrambled up the stone steps to the veranda and skidded into the hall.
    â€˜Grandma! Grandma!’ she gasped, trying to read the walls for indications of Lilian’s whereabouts. She thundered towards the kitchen. ‘He’s coming! Daddy—Dad—my father’s coming! He’ll be here in a minute! Grandma, he said my neck was dirty!’
    At the door of the kitchen where they collided, Lilian absorbed—what she had before merely seen—Emily’s startling appearance.
    â€˜My God!’ She drew a deep exasperated breath. ‘Isn’t that just like the thing.’ She glanced at the open front door. ‘And he said your neck was dirty?’
    â€˜Yes, and it isn’t!’ cried Emily, triumphant. She had told on him.
    Lilian led her to the daylight at the back door and scrutinized.
    â€˜It isn’t, is it?’
    After the slightest pause Lilian said, ‘What a thing to greet his daughter with after all this time! It must be more than a year since he was near you. I’ll have a thing or two to say to Harry Lawrence before I’m through.’
    Emily fished the roses from her hair and looked at Lilian with beaming admiration. She had a champion. She was defended. A moment later, remembering the need for stealth and speed, she got her grandmother back into the kitchen: from the front door her father would have seen their two figures outlined against the strawy grass of the back lawn. What fatal gesture she expected from him, she hardly knew, but her hopes were infinite.
    â€˜Listen!’ she hissed to Lilian, and, bending forward, open-mouthed, they received Harry’s shout, ‘Anyone home?...Lilian?’
    Guiltily the woman and child backed away. ‘Harry!’ Lilian bellowed. ‘Wait just a minute! I’ll be there in a minute.’
    She straightened the skirt of her thin shantung suit and briefly examined her face in the unflattering surface of an egg-lifter. At the same time she delivered orders to Emily to wash and dress and have a glass of milk and—here Mr Rosen wandered in from the garden where he had been unenthusiastically pushing the mower—sing a little song for Mr Rosen. Full of piety and obedience, Emily disappeared into the bathroom, and with much the same expression Mr Rosen went away to put on a tie and take off his hat.
    â€˜Well, and how’s the world treating you, Harry? Come in, come in, come in and sit down!’
    â€˜Oh, same as usual, you know. How are you getting on these days?’
    â€˜Oh, you know me, always the same. Nothing changes here.’
    They both laughed.
    Harry said, ‘I saw Paula when I was in Sydney. We’ve—er—we’re going to stick it out together, we think. So maybe next year we’ll be able to take Emily out of your way.’
    Lilian lifted her arms in a dramatic gesture of approval. ‘Well, I’m glad for your sakes. I’m very glad to hear it. Sit down—anywhere.’ She waved a hand at the dark empty chairs of velvet and leather.
    They looked cool to Harry, like caves. The sun was at the other side of the house and in here, through the open window, he could smell the fresh-cut